An interesting post. Before writing my opinion on your post, I should first confess that I haven’t read Latour or Collins. Usually that would have been enough of a reason to restrain me from commenting on this post, but I nevertheless commenting based on the assumption that what I am going to say is general enough to be not killed by anything that is there in Latour or Collins.

First of all, regarding the theory of relativity, it’s not clear from your writing whether you are referring to the special theory or the general theory. In either case, to say that Einstein’s authority was influential in establishing them is contrary to whatever I’ve learnt of their history. The statement that this authority was instrumental in acceptance of whatever a successful scientist like Einstein proposed is refuted by two clear counterexamples in the life of Einstein – one, the concept of photon which was valiantly resisted till Compton experiment after which the slowly the idea got accepted. Two, Einstein’s famous objections to the role of probability in Quantum Mechanics some of which were invalidated by observation of violations to Bell inequalities and were never broadly accepted anyway. The history of either of these ideas I would say seriously undermines such a hypothesis at least in the case of Einstein. I would be interested to know whether Collins addresses either of these issues ?

Regarding the various comments on atomic theory, I can just say that unfortunately, atomic theory can be easily misunderstood if one has not learnt quantum mechanics.

Regarding your comments on the way scientific theories have been co-constructed, such an hypothesis (however sweet may it may sound to a relativists heart) is most probably untenable given our understanding of human nature. The standard refutation of such an argument is precisely what Razib had offered – when a scientist talks about a fact, he/she doesn’t mean that it is completely uninfluenced by what you call as
contextual dimensions – what he/she means is that it is sometimes a good approximation to treat it so. I submit that none of the `in principle’ arguments that you advance has the ability to undermine such a position.

What would undermine such an argument, in case you are interested, is a careful study of when that mentioned approximation is good and when is it bad and establishing that in the current scientific practice(or in a part there of) such an approximation is necessarily bad. Until one has quantified the effect of different social influences, it would be very difficult to understand this argument about they being negligible. (Consider this – it is in principle true that if you jump out of tenth floor of a building in earth you will float for a few minutes – however, such an ‘in principle’ argument is completely misleading since the effects on which such an argument hangs on, are unimaginably negligible for all practical purposes.) I for one would be very much interested in studies which take up this challenge rather than writings which naively construct ‘in principle’ chains connecting human fallibility to current scientific practice and then try to hang some version of relativism without caring how strong these chains are…

“The electron orbit model of the past was established based upon the limitations of the devices that could measure electrons. But we now know because of improvements in the very devices you criticize, that electrons fill shells. ”

First, I’m not criticizing these devices. I clearly stated that these devices work as intended, and work very well. So well, that scientific theories are built based on the information we obtain from them– scientific theories that give us valuable and insightful information about the world we live in.

Second, if you agree with my last response about how what counts as an accurate measurement is negotiated, then you would also have to agree that the improvements you speak of must have also been negotiated.

Third, the point of my response to Razib was simply to show that problematizing science can be informative. It is important to see how science can get it wrong and right. Additionally, I never claimed that science was not “good enough to explain our world”. Rather, my hope was to situate science in the much broader category. I believe that science is good enough to explain our world. However, because of my tendency towards relativism, I think that there might be other explanations that are equally valuable or good enough.

Last of all, I’m not being naive. In fact, if you think that science still mechanically operates based on the scientific method, then you are the one being naive. The questions posed and answered in labs are extremely complex. The scientific method, although it still is valuable as a basic outline of how to go about posing and answering questions, is simply not “good enough” to produce answers to such complex questions.

Your understanding of “atoms as clouds” is yet another example of you don’t know what you’re talking about and still taking snipes at the scientific method.

Atoms are not considered to be clouds. Electrons, a component of atoms, are not considered to orbit in a fixed pattern around the nucleus of an atom. Before they were. The electron orbit model of the past was established based upon the limitations of the devices that could measure electrons. But we now know because of improvements in the very devices you criticize, that electrons fill shells. These shells do have fixed circumferences, determined by the attractive force of the protons within the nucleus. The electrons move about freely within the sphere of these shells, thus making them move about a cloud. Furthermore, the electron orbit model of the past wasn’t necessarily wrong too.

But you are wrong in describing whole atoms as clouds and stating that electrons freely ‘pop’ in and out of existence. Electrons can absorb and release energy, a quantifiable measurement. There are phenomena in which electrons are emitted from a shell as photons (wave-particles of light) after the absorption of energy from electromagnetic radiation such as x-rays or visible light.

So to reiterate, ‘electrically charged particles’ don’t phase thru existence and non-existence. Don’t open up a can of existential worms when decades, if not centuries, of research through modification has explained to us the reality of nuclear physics.

I’ll return to your issues with the accuracy of measurements, in a later comment. In the mean time, I believe you need to brush up on your basic sciences before you slam it as not being good enough to explain our world.

Kambiz

“all the extra stuff is just verbiage which exists to foster publication and an academic career. it doesn’t refine, clarify or elevate science in any way.”

My intention was not to refine, clarify, or elevate science. My intention was to point out that science should not be put on a pedestal, that it is like any other human practice, e.g. religious practice. In my mind science and religion are equally valuable and insightful. And of course, you and many others will criticize me for that, but that’s okay.

Second, such problematizing is not only fun, but also important. Science and technology are integral parts of daily life for many people in today’s world. Understanding how science effects the objects in our world is extremely important. Take for e.g. the following: Not to long ago, many people beleived that atoms were these round tiny balls that were electrically charged. This idea was “supported” by evidence obtained through the use of various technological devices. Today, many people deny this, and say that atoms are more like clouds, with electrically charged particles popping in and out of existence. Now, to me understanding how science can get it wrong, and right, and wrong again, is extremely important– because after all, science is about “describing” how the world we live in “really” is.

Now, what counts as an accurate measure is negotiated. And in being so, what follows then is that what counts as a technological device that gives accurate measures is also negotiated. All of such negotiations are prone to bias, subjectivity, and in general human devices.

For a more detailed look at ethnographic work on this, I suggest you look at Collins “The Seven Sexes”.

are you being sarcastic or serious? obviously anyone who works in a lab knows that there’s a lot of fudging and politics and subjectivity and bias. and an analysis of this reality is worthwhile. but this post, and this sort of problematizing scholarship, doesn’t really need to go beyond “science has subjective and biased aspects.” all the extra stuff is just verbiage which exists to foster publication and an academic career. it doesn’t refine, clarify or elevate science in any way.

“For instance, by using technological devices to convert physical matter into output, a scientist can claim that personal bias was eliminated by using human devices. By using human devices that render the authors invisible, the social, political, and historical dimensions (e.g. previous research that was deemed irrelevant or invalid, but yet contributed to the production of the fact) that contributed to the production of a true statement in the form of a fact are erased.”

As I understand this, you, Emanuel, are arguing that technologies that are used to understand the genetic differences between populations, like the GeneChip and the analyzing device, along with all the kits and reagents are undeniably human devices. So you mean that loading these chips with DNA and allowing the strands to hybridize, fluoresce, and ultimately be scanned and analyzed have a social, political, and historical bias that affect the result?

I don’t think so Emanuel. It seems like you don’t understand the technology. So you’re going about claiming that the culture that made them is flawed, thus making the devices flawed. Single strands of DNA vary between person to person. The individual bases that compose a particular strand bind to their complementary strand via hydrogen bonding, an attractive force. The amount of bonding between a sample (from an individual) to template strand can tell us how different the two strands are from one another and ultimately how different an individual’s genetics and evolutionary history is to someone else. Just as a spectrophotometer can analyze the density of particles in a solution, the set of technologies behind genetic analysis contribute to an understanding of the patterns of distributions of alleles. Likewise, going about thinking that since the devices that measure light are creations of humans, we’ll never know if light is real because humans are subjective is similar and naive.

The humans and culture that makes these technological devices do not imprint a subjective bias on them. You may bring up existential arguments, stating the existence of sub atomic particles, gravity and other invisible forces are ultimately all relative and parts of our understandings of reality since we’re the ones that made the devices and designed experiments to prove them evident. But these analytical devices operate upon the laws of nature. They don’t operate on feelings and predispositions. If you think that is not the case, then please spare yourself the embarrassment and bow out of this discussion.

Kambiz

Kambiz